Stuart McLaren said he “learned a lot” about his Scotland side after Caroline Weir’s penalty gave them a 1-0 win over Northern Ireland in Belfast.
McLaren handed debuts to defenders Brianna Westrup and Leah Eddie, while AC Milan’s Christy Grimshaw also made a late appearance from the bench.
The Scots struggled to create a lot of clear-cut chances throughout the 90 minutes, but finished the stronger of the two sides and found a late winner after Christie Murray was brought down in the box.
McLaren, who has been in charge while Scotland search for a permanent manager, said: “We learned a lot about individual players, about when there’s challenges and problems on the pitch how we could solve them. I thought in the first half our press from the front didn’t work as well as we had wanted it to, which is good experience to have in this context as it gave us something to solve.
“Credit to the players, the information we gave them at half-time they applied it really well and I think anybody who knows anything about football could see the difference between the team from the first half performance and the second half.
“So really pleased, lots of lessons, and nice to get a win and a clean sheet.”
It was McLaren’s third game in charge, with the interim manager also leading Scotland into Tuesday’s game with Wales in Llanelli.
Listen to the best of the post-match comments from Stuart McLaren and defender Rachel McLauchlan above.
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Stuart McLaren: 'Lessons learned' from Scotland in win over Northern Ireland